Fractured Nights
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Some nights, Christine lies awake beside Raoul and contemplates the night she spent with Erik, and question of a child. (Kay!verse)


A flurry of images before her eyes, impressions of memories. Erik, lying in her arms, looking up at her with half-blind eyes. Erik, lying beneath her, moaning as she kisses down the length of his torso, hand gripping her hip tightly. Erik, fingers strangely warm, interlaced with her own and pressed to her lips. Erik. Beloved Erik. Poor Erik.

How she tried to save him. How she would have done anything if only to keep breath in his lungs another five minutes. How it all would have been in vain, because he was dying anyway.

The Persian - Nadir - told her that he asked Erik to allow him to send for a doctor, but Erik refused to permit him and said any such intervention would be futile.

But even one more day with him would have been enough. One more day to hold him and be held by him and exist in their own world cut off from everyone else. One more day to kiss him and love him and ensure he knew she loved him. One more day to rub small, slow circles with her thumb on the back of his hand, and to feel him breathing beside her.

One more day as his wife.

Just one day. Such a simple desire. And yet, so far from her reach.

* * *

It's a craving burning deep in her soul, this longing for him, this desperation. If she could she'd slip her arms inside his dress coat, wrap herself around him and hold him tight. Her head to his chest, and he'd wrap his arms around her in turn, gentle and oddly hesitant at first and they'd just stand there, holding onto each other as if they were the lone survivors of a terrible shipwreck.

They stood like that, once, wrapped up in each other and bodies swaying to the music coursing through his veins. His fingers were light against the back of her neck, and she nuzzled into that chest, the white shirt crinkling under her cheek and -

No. It didn't happen. That never happened, she dreamt it. She lay beside him, his still body enfolded in her arms, and she nuzzled into his neck and softly sang a requiem and dreamed that he could have lived.

Six weeks. It's been six weeks since she left him in that bed, his cold hands folded over his heart and candles burning around him, her necklace left with him, entwined with his fingers. She didn't have her rosary beads, so she said her prayers as best she could without them, counting in her head and trying to hold the mysteries together. If she had them, she would have left them instead of the necklace, not that it would have mattered to him and he would probably prefer the necklace if he was able to have a say in the matter. But it matters to her that the rituals be observed, and perhaps it would have mattered to him too, because of that. He never could bear to see her cry, and at the last her tears were the holy water she blessed him with.

* * *

Some nights she wakes from cold nightmares with her heart racing, and is certain that Raoul is lying dead beside her. Only when she feels the gentle pulse of his blood through his veins beneath her fingers can she settle back into the bed. She's already lost one husband. She cannot bear to lose another.

* * *

This is the second month in a row where she has not had her courses. Last month, she put it down to the stress, to the grief, to the hollowness in her chest and the ever-present memory of Erik's cold body stiff beside her. And now, now she has to wonder.

It was not the ideal way to make love. He was so weak, and so much of it was down to her careful ministrations. Yet they managed, those golden-hued eyes rolling in his head as he choked on her strangled name and his hips bucked beneath her, one hand fumbling feebly at her side, the other lying dead beside him. And now...Now.

It is not wholly inconceivable that there might be a baby.

* * *

Raoul sleeps beside her, oblivious to the thoughts weaving their way through her brain. His dreams are peaceful, easy. For him Erik is already long ago and far away. He cannot begin to imagine the way her thoughts are haunted by him and how it all ended. She envies him his peace, and at the same time is grateful that he has it. Dear, sweet Raoul. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, and she can't bear to cause him any pain, not when he's already had so much thanks to her. She loves him, but it's a purer love with none of the burning desperation of what she felt for Erik, turned cold and empty now though she loves him still. For Raoul it is a tender love, delicate and she would protect him from the horrors of the world if she could, even as she lets him think he's protecting her.

She should tell him, she knows, of the love she shared that night with Erik. It is only fair that he knows and yet she can't bring herself to speak the words. The memories are too precious, too sacred and she cannot bear to share them. And besides, he had told her the wedding was off. She is with him now, he need not know of the kisses and touches she bestowed on Erik.

* * *

She is safe here in Erik's arms, his body warm against her. He will not let anything happen to her, will protect her from the world that longs to tear her away from him. His heart beats strong beneath her ear and all is well.

She wakes, and his arms dissipate like so much mist. And it is Raoul's heart beneath her ear and Raoul's body warm against her and Raoul softly murmuring that _it's all right_ and she's _only dreaming_. But he doesn't understand. It's not all right, not really. And the sadness is the fact of it being a dream, the reality that she still can't bear that the world can keep turning without Erik in it. She carries a baby inside of her, she knows it, and that baby is going to have to live in a world without its father, however good and kind Raoul is and can't he see that it can never be all right?

* * *

She left her necklace with him, she remembers that. She lay beside him, and sang softly every song that she could draw forth from the depths of her memory, and kissed his neck as tears leaked slowly from her eyes. And when her voice broke and she could sing no more for him, she dried her tears and better arranged the candles around him, so that he would have light. And she kissed his forehead and sat on the edge of that great big bed and parted his hands from where she'd lain them on his chest, sitting for a long time with his cold fingers held to her lips, mind too numb and body too drained to think or feel or know anything aside from the irrevocable knowledge that _Erik is dead_. Then, at last, the first candle guttering low, she lay his hands back together and took off her necklace, weaving the chain between his fingers so that he might always have something of her with him, before she kissed him one last time, picked up Ayesha and slipped from the room where her husband lay dead.

* * *

A son. As the nights slip past she finds herself dreaming more and more of a son as Raoul sleeps beside her. A son, with her eyes and her father's features so as not to betray his true parentage. A son for whom music would be a passion, with long fingers and the voice of an angel. A son that his father would be proud of.

(Secretly, she wants a son with golden eyes and dark hair and the sharp features of the man whom Erik remarked was his father. And she can't say she would object too much to a son with no nose and deep-set eyes, though she would worry always about the cruel things the world would say to him and do all within her power to keep him safe. She wants a son whose parentage cannot be doubted, to walk with no shame and say _yes I loved him_ and _yes I (made) love to him_.)

She'll love the baby either way. She knows it. Boy or girl, regardless of who the child takes after she'll love it; she knows that deep in her heart. And the more she thinks about it, the more she lets herself imagine the baby maybe living inside of her, the more she hopes that her intuition is right, and it is not simply grief playing with her cycle.

* * *

The easiest nights are the ones where she curls around Raoul, and presses herself close to him. Cradling his head to her chest eases the gaping hole inside of her, making it so much easier to breathe. She can let her eyes fall closed, and nuzzle into his hair, and let herself believe it is Erik in her arms again, after all they lay like this for a time as he slept, and slip into painless sleep.

* * *

She's certain of it, now. Certain of the life born from death that lives nestled safe beneath her heart. Ayesha seems certain of it, too, curling protectively on her knee at every opportunity. As if she knows that her master's blood is living on inside of Christine, and wishes to ensure that no harm befalls the precious child, looking on Raoul as if _he_ is the threat.

She probably senses the enmity which Raoul bore against Erik, which Raoul probably _still_ bears though he never mentions her first husband, and acts for all of the world as if the man never existed, though he is gentle with her when she wakes from restless dreams where she is back in that room and he is dying again in her arms.

Raoul should know. He should know that Christine is with child, and that the child is not his. He _should_ have the choice to reject his wife and her son, but Christine cannot bring herself to give him that choice. _He_ was the one who decided the wedding was off if she returned to Erik. Yes, she would have gone back to him anyway. But if the wedding had not been off, she is not certain that she would have made love to him. Perhaps, when she discovered the depth of his illness, she would have simply sat on that bed and rested his head in her lap and sang to him. She might have kissed him, kissed away his tears and kissed his fingers and held his hand in her own as the life slipped from his body. He would have been content with that, would not have asked for anything more. Would not have even dreamt of anything more, because in spite of everything he was a gentleman at heart and he would have been grateful simply to have her with him, to not be alone.

(As it was, he did not ask for anything more. He merely looked at her as if he were afraid he was dreaming, and she did the rest. She kissed him and she straddled his thin hips and she guided him inside of her ever so gently, and not for a moment does she regret her actions.)

And even now, married to Raoul, she cannot quite make herself believe that he needs to know what happened in Erik's room.

* * *

She'll tell the baby of the Angel of Music, and leave out the part where he kidnapped her and almost killed Raoul. She'll tell the baby of the architect who built a palace of trapdoors for the shah of Persia, and leave out the part where he was a skilled assassin, though she'll tell the bit where he was poisoned and had his life saved by his best friend. She'll tell the baby of the magician at the Great Fair with a voice from heaven, and of the little boy travelling with the gypsies who made the lilies sing, and of the young man who was still half a child who lived in a laboratory of his own making and created dazzling inventions designed buildings of such beauty. She'll tell the baby of the boy who grew into a man who always longed to be surrounded by beauty, and so told her stories and played her music and made her smile. And never once will she tell the baby that the man in all of these stories was one and the same and his father.

Her baby will need stories to grow up on, as well as music, and if there is no better music than her voice then there are no better stories than the ones that she learned from Nadir. Her baby will know them all, she will make sure of it, and will live shrouded in a world of love, whatever secrets she has to keep to ensure it.

She doubts if Erik would protest. He wanted her to be happy. And with their baby, and Raoul, she will be.


End file.
